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I think the world would be in a better place if people stopped believing in fairy tales. This includes religion, Santa Claus, and every other useless nonsense.
Religion, specifically, set the world back by 1000-1500 years. Sure would be nice to live in a time when cancer doesn’t run rampant — but nah, let’s let the imaginary fairy grandpa solve everything for centuries.
Maybe, if there was a new better-fitting, revolutionary superstructure that would replace it
I think by its context, religion was the ideology of feudalism and the medieval times' economy (eg. Hinduism)...
And while it was progressive for its time, when the dawn of a new system came, its weaknesses were exposed...
No. If it wasn't religion people would be assholes to each other about something else. Religion is just an excuse.
You are wrong to think that religion is only about fear. The bigger part for the individual IMO is that it provides comfort.
I'm a mortician/postmortem scientist, who used to run the WSU Funeral History Museum. Based on my research, I don't think humans could exist without some type of religion/code/customs. As long as there has been death, even in ancient/prehistoric times, humans have been doing specific procedures, to say goodbye to their fallen loved ones.
There's writings in almost every culture that teach us about what these civilizations believed, and some are beautiful, while others are kindof terrifying, but it all wrapped around people trying to cope with death.
Even if we found out complete proof for what actually happens when you die and after death, some people are still going to prefer their religion's ideas because it brings them more peace. Death seems to be the clinch pin for all religions, and I honestly don't think we'd have religion, if we didn't understand the concept of death. People just want something to believe in.
Now, the garbage parts of religion are created by people seeking power, money, and control, and as long as there's those who desire to conquer others, religion will be made up and used as a scapegoat, as to why certain people deserve power.
@Shelbyeileen I have a pet theory, that religion is basically a hardware vulnerability exploitation. Vulnerability being "we can't comprehend death, physically". Because trying to reconstruct non-existence in our world model causes division by zero, and everything breaks because you can't divide by zero and have meaningful results. So in order to avoid it, your brain bends its model of reality, starts telling itself fairy tales about the supernatural world, redefines death as "transformation", and basically bullshits itself into avoiding facing the inevitable.
> Even if we found out complete proof for what actually happens when you die and after death
We have. Your consciousness just shuts down forever. You're a mortician, you would know. We just can't grapple with it.
Oh, I know the electricity stops and we shut down like a dead battery but too many humans think that something might happen to the "soul", and use the excuse that energy can neither be created or destroyed, just transferred. They want to believe in the near death experiences, and have 100% proof that there's no reincarnation or ghosts or afterlife
If we weren't fighting about "this" then we would be fighting about "that" and it can be anything at all that we can make up. It's made up!
Humans are volatile by nature. If it wasn't religion it would be race I'd it's not race it would be accent and if not that then something else. Everyone one could be gray blobs and there will be someone saying "Actually We’re the Grayest and the Blobiest”.
Peace will only be achieved when humanity is unified and if that happen we stop being human and something else.
I'm not too sure being non-religious from the start would lead to better education. Seems to me that religion was quite a big driver behind early education. You'll also have some trouble separating history religion and science at that point, people told each other stories about things that happened or how they thought things worked. Some of those stories are rather more fantastical than they needed to be, but how would you tell if there's nothing to kickstart intellectual discourse in the first place?
And the whole religion stops crime through fear idea seems overly simplistic. It's the same reasoning that bigger sentences would lower crime, and so far that hasn't worked terribly well.
Yes. At the very least we might be more honest about why we keep slaughtering each other.
I don't believe so. I believe religions are human creations and as such, they can't be awful if people don't have that awful side to begin with. If religions disappeared overnight or were magically erased from existence we would still struggle with the same issues, only with a different flavour. Perhaps there would be no lies on certain topics but I'm not too sure that would make a massive difference overall.
As a life long atheist, the simple answer is no.
The longer answer is:
Humans have a brain that is effectively an extremely good pattern recognition engine, we are wired to find meaning in things, we anthropomorphize everything with no regard for logic or sanity.
Humans are hard coded to make religion or religion adjacent things.
To imagine a world without religion, would mean that we are talking entirely different brain structures, basically we wouldn't humans anymore.
In saying the above, I think religion has had its time, it has had a good run. It now causes far more problems than it solves. Having a belief system based on an imaginary sky daddy, really doesn't add much to the modern world.
Side note: why do people anthropomorphize their food, it is really messed up.
Religion hasn't had its time so much as it is rapidly evolving along with the rest of society.
Religion does not have to mean sky daddy or even have to imply belief in the supernatural.
Religion isn't really evolving fast enough. It is being out competed at every turn, the fastest growing religious position in a lot of places is 'no religion'.
What are we doing instead, various fandom's...
I believe I’ve seen this position referred to as “post-theist.”
This right here. If we didn't have religion, practically the first thing we'd do is begin hallucinating about one. There's a "religion"-shaped hole in every human brain, basically, even though things that we wouldn't necessarily readily recognize as religious patterns could come to fill it, wholly or partially. Our pattern recognition/reconstruction and predictive modeling systems will always generate hallucinations that, like most heuristics, are fundamentally not reality but MAY nevertheless offer sufficient utility (or the feeling of utility) that the synaptic connections they comprise will end up self-reinforcing.
The amount of vigilance it would take to continually purge these cognitive patterns would be more expensive and exhausting than most of the potential dangers of letting them exist.
But it's possible to mindfully decide to cultivate the features and aspects of what emergently congeals there such that it's more likely to be harmless, such as certain hobbies, fandoms, habits, or ritual-esque behavioral patterns.
Reflecting on our experiences against an anthropomorphized hypothetical observer to gain insights we would otherwise miss shows up even in places like computer programming - see "rubber duck debugging" - sufficiently strict religious sects would most certainly decry this activity as idolatry to a false god, even if YOU clearly do not classify a rubber ducky as a god. Because, again, the root of religiosity is group consensus of a socially shared memetic hallucination. what they perceive becomes a component of their beliefs even if it doesn't become a component of yours.
This leads me to often consider spirituality, magical thinking, ritualistic behaviors, and religiosity in general as a bridge between our animalistic impulses and instincts vs. our sapience, or whatever you might label "higher" cognitive functions that enable abstract decision differentiation.
It's tricky to say. Organised religion throughout history has been one of the biggest oppressive machines and cause of untold human life lost. On the flip side, religion has been the source (or at least financer) of an enormous amount of the most highly regarded artistry in our history.
The reason that isn't an obvious tip of the scale, is that if religion poofed out of existence, I'm almost certain that the oppressive machine would have just taken another form and still caused untold destruction, loss of life, and hatred. But I'm not sure the art would have still thrived as it did.
This is a hard question. I think that we would be better off if more people adopted secular worldviews. But throughout history? I don't think we can simply say "what if there were no religions" -- we'd have to be completely different creatures for it to have gone that way. But I do think we'd be better off if we were that kind of creature.
It's interesting that every group of people, basically ever, has started a religion. I'm no anthropologist, but as far as I know, every civilization to have ever existed has formed one. Forming a religion is as natural as forming a language. Clearly, it's a thing we do. Lacking an explanation for our questions, from "what are rainbows?" to "what happens when we die?" we will apparently just fill something in. Everyone did it.
For us to have not formed religions, we'd have to be more comfortable with uncertainty. We'd need to have been better at accepting that we don't know some things, and we can doggedly look for answers, but we shouldn't insist that we know something before we really do. And I think our species kind of sucks at that.
If we were better at accepting uncertainty while still pursuing answers, we'd all be better off. And maybe, as a side effect of that, we wouldn't have formed religions.
When Og and Bog saw the sun come over the hill one morning, and Og was like, "Hey Bog, how do you think that happens?" Bog should've said, "I don't know. Maybe someday, someone will know." Instead, Bog went off on some real bullshit, and now here we are.
It's interesting that every group of people, basically ever, has started a religion.
One such example of a group of people who had NOT developed religiosity I'm aware of, interestingly, also did not develop mathematics or written language, because the capacity for abstraction which form the substrate that religions grow upon is ALSO a prerequisite for speculative concepts like symbolic meaning and set theory.
I'm speaking of certain mostly out of contact tribes of humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people
And even they, despite living with an exclusively direct observation empiricism-based worldview, are still susceptible to collective hallucination (though they don't cultivate it into an organized system that will ever persist beyond those who directly experienced any given hallucinatory event).
If there were no religions I'd figure that human race is one where tribalism can't catch on as well, in which case there would probably be a lot less organized violence like wars.
Individual crimes are always going to happen with or without religion. Crimes generally have real tangible punishments and there are still criminals. Imaginary punishments aren't going to do much to stop them.
We'd certainly be better off in the education/intelligence department if we promoted skepticism and criticized faith or any belief without evidence, but to be fair the word "better" is more broad than that...
i think if we stayed with the idea of God's representing natural phenomena and being flawed characters vs single deity that is all seeing all powerful and a singular conduit and thus used by ambitious men and women to control the masses be it a pope or televangelist.
As we learned more about the ways of science I think they would have gracefully faded into the background and turned into the fables they are today.
It’s pretty naive to think we wouldn’t have just found a different excuse to burn people alive.
Yes
Yes, but not just because of the lack of religions, but the lack of superstition that would require. Basically if everyone believed things based on physical evidence, rather than feelings, the world would be better. But, also, we as a species might not have survived our earliest days.
Religion is just a tool. A tool is only as good as the person using it.
Not really, religion makes rules and people follow them. The point is that, yes, we humans can create "rules", but the question is who is going to create these rules, who are you going to choose as the rule-maker, and how are you going to make sure that everyone follows this rule because everyone has their own ideas or morals about it? Religion must and will exist. Even today, what we create as "rules" certainly come from religion, or at least are closely linked to it. People and their morals come from religion, there must be some power over people to make these rules. Let me give you an example, I am a human being who forbids eating apples, as another human being, if there is no consequence, why should I obey it? Because according to me or according to my morality there is no harm in eating it. And who is right in this situation? No one. Then who are we supposed to listen to? A power superior to us humans. I hope that answers your questions.
As an atheist, I think it was necessary for human development.
Fear is an extremely motivating force, and without the threat of a "hell" for disobeying/ hurting society, it wouldn't motivate people to cooperate. Additionally without the allure of heaven, it wouldn't motivate people to work harder, together.
Without instruments of science, the world is would be a complete mystery. Religion existed to give it history and meaning, to give people a place and meaning in life. It feels much more comforting to believe you are the beloved child of a greater being, crafting you by hand, instead of an insignificant creature on a wet rock floating endlessly in the void.
Today I think it is obsolete to an extent, as science has taken the latter role (understanding), and one should not need to be threatened with eternal damnation to stop being malicious. Today religion is now more frequently used for means of brainwash and control rather than betterment of society, which is why I decide not to partake in it.
Yes Yes Yes!
Eh, looking through the comments (and its so nice to see that folks really giving some good thought to their comments on such a hot button topic), there's not much I can add.
I fall into the "humans will find excuses" camp. I also think that religion isn't a bad thing, per se. Even organized religion doesn't have to be destructive at its extreme. But it's also inevitable that the section of humanity that craves power and control is going to use whatever avenue for such that they find.
Since all religions are susceptible to zealotry, I don't think we'll ever be free of religious zealots, which means there's always going to be people insisting that other people follow their religion's rules, or else.
Now, that isn't exclusive to religion, but it's the obvious example of that kind of thinking. You can look at pretty much any bloc that's belief based and find zealots. Politics, whoooo boy! Veganism. Even fandoms of cartoons have zealotry in a way, though it tends to be a much less invasive kind, akin to music genre fanatics; it's more gatekeeping than proselytizing. But you do run into the kind of obsessive fandom where if you don't like it, you suck; and you have to watch/listen/read.
Now, it may seem strange to connect religious zealotry to fandoms, but it's the same underlying way of thinking. People are just prone to wanting to control other people, and will use any excuse to do so.
That proclivity is present even in people that think they don't think that way, and actively try to weed it out of themselves. Ever catch yourself thinking "the whole world would be better if they all insert personal belief here? That's the underlying kind of thinking that can snowball into the bigger kind of problem. Doesn't even matter if it's true on a factual level, it's the way it's thought about and approached that's the key. If anything, a belief being highly factual and demonstrably true makes it more likely to turn into zealotry.
So, better without religion? Eh, nah, not imo. Just different in detail.
No, because religions are a guide for a person or a group. It is also a compass to detect good and bad. That there are people with bad intentions who misunderstand religion is another issue.
As long as there's an unequal distribution of power there's going to be humans who are going to abuse it. If they don't use god as an excuse they'll use the glory of the nation or numbers on a spreadsheet
Yes, agreed. Wondering and being amazed by what we don't know isn't the issue. The issue is the guy that says he knows, and that you need to follow his organized religion to keep you from perma-death.
Belief in the divine likely comes from our brains' hyperactive agency detection system: our brains err on the side of seeing agency where there is none in order to keep us alive.
If a branch snaps behind you and you react as if someone did it but it was really nothing, you're fine. But if it was a human or other animal and you react as if it was nothing, you might be food.
Property crime is largely a factor of poverty, but also social inequality. If you lack a need you will try to fulfill that need. If you feel like you're unfairly "less-than", you're much more likely to engage in prohibited behavior to correct that. But also if you have power or wealth, your brain becomes less capable of empathy making it much easier for you to criminally hurt others - the rich do most crimes.
Religion is just using this evolutionarily beneficial flaw in our brains to justify the unjust social hierarchies which drive crime. So in a roundabout way, religion puts upward pressure on crime.
You don’t need religion to be a moral person, and you don’t have to reject religion to act amorally. But there is no perfect, universal, scientific morality. Cultures, communities, individuals will vary on what they consider a moral act, and morality can change with circumstance. When different moralities interact, there will be conflict. And the amoral (or rather those, who do not subscribe to the same morality as those around them) will always use others’ morality as a tool to manipulate, a curtain to hide behind, a weapon to wield, and a shield to defend with.
Religion helps communities to build a common morality in order to reduce tensions and foster fellowship within the group. But there will always be communities. There will always be disagreements, confusion, frustration, pride, loyalty, forgetfulness, honor, greed, hunger, struggle, disease, countervailing needs and desires, and mercy. The absence of religion would not stop people from seeking safe harbor and kinship in others, whether that is social clubs, fandoms, sports teams, political parties, activist organizations, etc. And when that kinship is endangered or perceived to be endangered, the absence of religion will not stop people from seeking to obstruct, forestall, eliminate, or revenge against whatever or whomever is perceived to be the cause.
Something i read during the beginning of the Iraq War put things in perspective. During the time of monarchies it was suicidal to challenge them . Religion provided a balance because you can't kill God. Kings and queens learned to work with religious leaders to help deal with the populace. Democracy made it less necessary. I don't know if any of this is true but it does make sense
We'd just find some other pointless form of tribalism to hate each other over.
Check out the Lucifer Principal by Howard Bloom.
My personal opinion (as a dispassionate atheist) is that religion isn’t the problem with human nature. In the U.S., for instance, we have some Christians who have strayed so far, I don’t get how they’ve even seen a Bible verse. But also, basically every major Civil Rights leader was a Christian preacher or woman of faith. There are similar situations everywhere. There’s Buddhists who are so non-violent they wouldn’t kill a fly and other “Buddhists” who commit genocide, which doesn’t even make fucking sense.
So, my view of religion is that it’s mostly not the thing to focus on. People can be organized for good or evil and there’s plenty of secular things where people define an identity. I suspect if religion never existed, we’d have all the same problems. I mean, we have soccer hooligans and it’s not because people object to 22 people getting some exercise on a lovely afternoon. (Or a miserable, rainy Wednesday night in England.)
Iran and Turkey would be a better place, that's for sure. Especially Iran was a free country, women rights and everything. Now priests control the country, and women are getting killed for not wearing their clothing "correct".
Also, the whole western world entered the "dark ages" which was a big push backwards in terms of living standards and science. That was because of religion, so we might be 100-200 years ahead now, if it wasn't for that.